A Warm Climate Prevails as Experts Study Ecological Problems

By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.

Published: October 7, 1997

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6—
President Clinton today convened a daylong conference on climate change that produced a series of optimistic discussions about harnessing technology, ingenuity and the entrepreneurial spirit to save the planet from global warming.

Mr. Clinton peppered experts with questions and ruminated aloud on how to prod the most energy-intensive economy in the world to break its addiction to fossil fuels, and how to negotiate a treaty by the end of the year that will bind the rest of the world to do the same. Vice President Al Gore and Cabinet members were on hand, and the balcony at Georgetown University was packed with appreciative students from Mr. Clinton's alma mater.

There was almost no talk of energy taxes, heavy-handed regulations or other unpopular measures to make swift, deep reductions in the use of energy and the emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat in the atmosphere and threaten widespread ecological damage in the next century.

Instead, Transportation Secretary Federico F. Pena held up solar roofing tiles and said they are on the verge of economic feasibility. Mary Good, an investor who is a former Administration official, spoke of the potential to grow algae and convert it into clean fuel. And Tom Casten, president of Trigen Energy Corporation, said that the deregulation of the utility industry would help double the efficiency of electricity plants.

E. Linn Draper, president of American Electric Power, a major utility company, said Americans would be more likely to invest in energy conservation if the Administration would create a system of pollution-permits trading to encourage cost-effective reductions in emissions.

Fred Krupp, executive director of the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group that favors market-based incentives to reduce pollution, said that greenhouse gas emissions could be brought below 1990 levels by 2005. The Administration has been leaning toward establishing a less-ambitious target, with emissions leveling off at 1990 levels by 2010.

Only at the end of the day, after Mr. Clinton left, did a panel of economists inject a somewhat more dismal tone to the proceedings, warning that it would not be painless to cut energy use so deeply.

''As I listen to all this, I am concerned that we are greatly underestimating the size and complexity of the undertaking,'' said William Nordhaus, a professor of economics at Yale University. ''We are not going to introduce these wondrous technologies unless we increase the cost of energy.''

Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, one of Mr. Clinton's economic advisers who has been counseling caution as the Administration debates its negotiating position, was more sanguine in public. ''The question is not whether we can respond effectively to this threat,'' he said. ''We can and I believe we must.''

Mr. Clinton encouraged the attendees to accentuate the positive as they discussed what is described as a serious global problem.

But Mr. Clinton seemingly recognizes that there is no easy solution to the steady growth of greenhouse gas emissions.

Groping for alternative policies that would encourage consumers to buy energy-saving products, he mentioned four alternatives: raising the price of energy, lowering the price of new technologies, creating market-based incentives for people to invest in saving fuel, or increasing the public's awareness of the problem.